Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sounded cautious about the possibility of renewed war with Iran amid emerging understandings between Washington and Tehran. But within his own Likud party, one senior lawmaker is already warning that Israel may eventually have no choice but to act against Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles.
“We will have to deal with this once every year and a half or two years. We have no choice,” Likud MK David Bitan said Monday in an interview with 103FM.
His comments came after reports that a developing agreement between the United States and Iran would not include restrictions on the Islamic Republic’s missile program, a point that has drawn criticism in Israel.
On Sunday, Netanyahu addressed the criticism over a potential deal that would leave Iran’s regime in place and reportedly fail to curb its missile arsenal.
“President Trump and I agreed that any final agreement with Iran must remove the nuclear threat,” Netanyahu said. “This means dismantling Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities and removing the enriched nuclear material from its territory.”
Netanyahu added that Trump had reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against threats on all fronts, including in Lebanon.
“The partnership between us and our two countries has been proven on the battlefield and has never been stronger,” Netanyahu said. “My policy, like President Trump’s policy, remains unchanged: Iran will not have nuclear weapons.”
Bitan said Monday that he hoped Trump and the United States would understand that they could not proceed with the kind of framework that has been reported.
“The issue of toppling the regime was never a goal; we hoped that would happen,” Bitan said. “As for the missiles, every time we will have to deal with it again. Otherwise, they will reach a very large number of missiles, and then if there is a war, it will be an existential danger.”
He added, “We will have to deal with this once every year and a half or two years, no matter what is in the agreement. I do not believe they will tie our hands on this issue.”
Bitan also said Israel remains committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
“Iran will not be nuclear. We will do everything we can so that it will not be nuclear,” he said. “We cannot allow that from an existential standpoint.”
Still, he acknowledged that Israel likely cannot fully address the nuclear threat on its own.
“We cannot do this alone. It is apparently difficult to do this without American weapons and American power,” Bitan said. “Netanyahu succeeded in mobilizing the United States for this. He did not completely prevent the nuclear issue, but he pushed it back by years, and that cannot be ignored. The problem was the level of expectations.”